Chapter LXXXIV: Letter 354: To Mr. Hoppner

"Ravenna, January 31. 1820.

"You would hardly have been troubled with the removal of my
furniture, but there is none to be had nearer than Bologna, and I
have been fain to have that of the rooms which I fitted up for my
daughter there in the summer removed here. The expense will be at
least as great of the land carriage, so that you see it was
necessity, and not choice. Here they get every thing from Bologna,
except some lighter articles from Forli or Faenza.

"If Scott is returned, pray remember me to him, and plead laziness
the whole and sole cause of my not replying:--dreadful is the
exertion of letter-writing. The Carnival here is less boisterous,
but we have balls and a theatre. I carried Bankes to both, and he
carried away, I believe, a much more favourable impression of the
society here than of that of Venice,--recollect that I speak of the
_native_ society only.

"I am drilling very hard to learn how to double a shawl, and should
succeed to admiration if I did not always double it the wrong side
out; and then I sometimes confuse and bring away two, so as to put
all the Servanti out, besides keeping their _Servite_ in the cold
till every body can get back their property. But it is a dreadfully
moral place, for you must not look at anybody's wife except your
neighbour's,--if you go to the next door but one, you are scolded,
and presumed to be perfidious. And then a relazione or an amicizia
seems to be a regular affair of from five to fifteen years, at
which period, if there occur a widowhood, it finishes by a
sposalizio; and in the mean time it has so many rules of its own
that it is not much better. A man actually becomes a piece of
female property,--they won't let their Serventi marry until there
is a vacancy for themselves. I know two instances of this in one
family here.

"To-night there was a ----[67] Lottery after the opera; it is an
odd ceremony. Bankes and I took tickets of it, and buffooned
together very merrily. He is gone to Firenze. Mrs. J * * should
have sent you my postscript; there was no occasion to have bored
you in person. I never interfere in anybody's squabbles,--she may
scratch your face herself.

"The weather here has been dreadful--snow several feet--a _fiume_,
broke down a bridge, and flooded heaven knows how many _campi_;
then rain came--and it is still thawing--so that my saddle-horses
have a sinecure till the roads become more practicable. Why did
Lega give away the goat? a blockhead--I must have him again.

"Will you pay Missiaglia and the Buffo Buffini of the Gran
Bretagna? I heard from Moore, who is at Paris; I had previously
written to him in London, but he has not yet got my letter,
apparently.

"Believe me," &c.

[Footnote 67: The word here, being under the seal, is illegible.]

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